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The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience
7 pages, Unknown Binding
Published January 1, 1949
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About the author
Jacques Lacan
182 books1,218 followersJacques-Marie-Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and doctor, who made prominent contributions to the psychoanalytic movement. His yearly seminars, conducted in Paris from 1953 until his death in 1981, were a major influence in the French intellectual milieu of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly among post-structuralist thinkers.
Lacan's ideas centered on Freudian concepts such as the unconscious, the castration complex, the ego, focusing on identifications, and the centrality of language to subjectivity. His work was interdisciplinary, drawing on linguistics, philosophy, mathematics, amongst others. Although a controversial and divisive figure, Lacan is widely read in critical theory, literary studies, and twentieth-century French philosophy, as well as in the living practice of clinical psychoanalysis.
Lacan's ideas centered on Freudian concepts such as the unconscious, the castration complex, the ego, focusing on identifications, and the centrality of language to subjectivity. His work was interdisciplinary, drawing on linguistics, philosophy, mathematics, amongst others. Although a controversial and divisive figure, Lacan is widely read in critical theory, literary studies, and twentieth-century French philosophy, as well as in the living practice of clinical psychoanalysis.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
March 21, 2022
17/12/20:
An ugly little technical paper published for a specialist audience in 1949. Really only understandable if you already know the basic idea from secondary sources, and even then a lot of the specifics will go over your head without a decent understanding of Freud and the state of professional discourse among psychoanalysts at the time of publication. Lacan is an atrocious writer, too, and I think it's because of his ego, in the colloquial sense of the term - he's absolutely full of himself, and more than a little pretentious. It's too bad his ideas are interesting, despite his best attempts to make them incomprehensible. That's insofar as they are his ideas, anyway! According to this article, he basically stole the concept of the mirror stage from a 1931 article by Henri Wallon. His original contribution here is to bring Wallon's idea into contact with psychoanalysis, where it fits very nicely indeed.
As I understand it (which, frankly, may not be very far - take this with a grain of salt), Lacan is challenging the idea held by Heinz Hartmann and other contemporaneous psychoanalysts that the ego is some essential, rational (or at least realistic) core of the self. He has a go at the existentialists, too, for their naive emphasis on a similarly autonomous conception of self. He puts forward an ego that is essentially other, developed through an act of 'misrecognition' where we come to identify with a particular set of images and symbols, arranged to give a false sense of unitary selfhood. In the mirror stage, we only identify with images of the body. When the mirror stage ends, we start to identify with language and other symbolic structures. This 'link[s] the I to socially elaborated situations':
In other words, the process of misrecognition becomes socially mediated - other people act as 'mirrors' in the sense that we see ourselves as we suppose they see us, and we get the images and symbols we come to identify with from them (i.e. from particular social contexts). This kind of self-alienation has to occur for us to function in society, but it causes neuroses. Specifically, Lacan implicates the narcissistic misrecognition of the mirror stage in the development of aggressive impulses and the repetition compulsion that Freud associates with the death drive. It feels like some sort of psychoanalytic take on the biblical fall from an innocent, pre-linguistic state of nature into the vicissitudes of the social and the ethical.
It seems like there might be some influence of Hegel via Kojève here. Lacan's notion of the formation of the ego through (mis)recognition resembles the shift from consciousness to self-consciousness through the struggle for recognition in The Phenomenology of Spirit. Lacan's ideas are also similar to Fichte's, although much more social - for Fichte, it's the gap between self as subject and self as object that constitutes the 'I'. Given this definition, you can't just crane your neck around and see yourself seeing. To do so would be both epistemologically and ontologically impossible - because this gap constitutes the subject, overcoming it would be synonymous with the dissolution of whatever it is that's trying to look in the first place.
One more thing that comes to mind is Vipassana meditation, which is aimed at revealing the truth of anatta (the Buddhist notion of 'non-self'); it teaches practitioners to decouple their identification with the ego and personal experience, and to recognise that whatever it is that is experiencing seems to lack substantive content apart from its form.
15/01/21:
My perspective on this text has changed since writing the above review, but I've decided to keep it and build on it like a true Hegelian.
Read the right translation!
The Fink translation is much, much clearer. Do not start with the Sheridan translation, like I did. Even with the Fink translation, though, you can tell it must have been a real challenge wrangling Lacan's disordered syntax into something clear and comprehensible. I kept forgetting the subject of the sentence as I read... or maybe Lacan did. It's often unclear what the subject was in the first place, but it feels like some supreme abstraction has been carried over from the previous sentence - or was it the one before that? The previous paragraph, maybe?
A Hegelian 'real'
When I first read this essay, I interpreted Lacan's notion of the 'I' in relation to what I knew about his notion of the real, which - at the time - I thought of as roughly analogous to Kant's thing-in-itself - some transcendental x that escapes representation by definition, about which we can say nothing but that it is logically implied by the phenomenal world insofar as we feel we need to ground that world in something external in order to avoid tautology. Since learning more about Lacan and what it means for him to be Hegelian rather than Kantian, I've realised he means something quite different by the 'real'. For Hegel, each term in the dialectic that characterises subjectivity (i.e. the world as it unfolds, including the self that unfolds within it – note that this is a broader idea than the individual psychological subject) is interdependent, capable of being thought of only insofar as it is contradicted by the other terms in reference to which it is defined. A Hegelian understanding of Lacan's notion of the real is therefore not outside or beyond language. Rather, it is a function of language (or a function of representation more generally); like each term in Hegel's dialectic, it only is insofar as it isn't what it's defined negatively with reference to. That is to say, the real isn't outside of language by the very fact that it's only defined in relation to language. To quote Jacques-Alain Miller, cited in an essay by Adrian Johnston:
Informed by this understanding of the real, the split that constitutes the Lacanian subject is not at the transcendental intersection between ontology and epistemology highlighted by Kant and Fichte, but it is entirely within representation. Like the apparent contradiction that constitutes the Hegelian subject, it is immanent rather than transcendental. Like Hegel, Lacan transposes the Kantian / Fichtean split down one level of abstraction, into the realm of phenomena; in doing so, he resists the temptation to posit some self-sufficient externality that could ground experience. As in Hegel's system, we only get the appearance or implication of a beyond, as a function of subjectivity. This beyond isn't substantive in-itself because it can only be thought of as part of a greater whole that includes its opposite.
For Kant and Fichte, the split that constitutes the subject is between phenomena and the unknowable 'beyond' of the thing-in-itself that conditions them and makes them possible. For Hegel and Lacan, it is entirely within experience - for Hegel, it is between consciousness and self-consciousness, and for Lacan, it is between self as speaking subject and self as object of speech. Speech always posits a subject and an object in this way; like geist, it cuts the world up into particulars by positing abstractions that define one another by contrast. Both thinkers seem to resemble Whitehead here, who argued that conceptual thought works by cutting things off from the rest of the universe. That is to say, it identifies and represents particulars by falsifying them - by abstracting them from the (spatial and temporal) context that defines them.
Lacan finds a home for something like Hegel's dialectic in structural linguistics, but it's still basically a panlogism of phenomena (without meaning to imply some self-sufficient 'real') as they unfold for the human subject. It's not psychology in the usual sense of the term - like Hegel, Lacan is concerned with structures that extend beyond the typical psychological subject, although he does concern himself with the effect of these structures on that subject and their role in constituting him / her.
The mirror stage as an empirical claim
Lacan actually rebuffs my transcendental misunderstanding of his subject right here, in the essay:
To avoid this charge, Lacan repeatedly cites 'objective data' about how people and animals behave at specific points in the development of the individual. He stresses his empirical intent by describing the mirror stage as a 'temporal dialectic' (78) (not an ontological one, as in Fichte) that proposes a 'genetic order' for the development of ego defenses (79). Over half a century later, the mirror stage has well and truly been falsified as an empirical claim. So far as I know, we have no real reason to believe that infants are born without a sense of themselves as one object among others in an autonomous and independently-existing external world. Research revealed decades ago that the famous 'A-not-B error' taken by Piaget as a failure of object permanence is most likely just a failure of memory and motor coordination. Also, it's odd that Lacan's notion of self as object should depend on language as such - other species show complex social behaviour without anything near the level of symbolic abstraction humans are capable of. A more charitable interpretation of Lacan's theory would, I think, take the notion of speech in the broadest sense, as conceptual thought. In any case, the mirror stage only retains value as a metaphor for philosophical ideas about the self.
Review continued here.
An ugly little technical paper published for a specialist audience in 1949. Really only understandable if you already know the basic idea from secondary sources, and even then a lot of the specifics will go over your head without a decent understanding of Freud and the state of professional discourse among psychoanalysts at the time of publication. Lacan is an atrocious writer, too, and I think it's because of his ego, in the colloquial sense of the term - he's absolutely full of himself, and more than a little pretentious. It's too bad his ideas are interesting, despite his best attempts to make them incomprehensible. That's insofar as they are his ideas, anyway! According to this article, he basically stole the concept of the mirror stage from a 1931 article by Henri Wallon. His original contribution here is to bring Wallon's idea into contact with psychoanalysis, where it fits very nicely indeed.
As I understand it (which, frankly, may not be very far - take this with a grain of salt), Lacan is challenging the idea held by Heinz Hartmann and other contemporaneous psychoanalysts that the ego is some essential, rational (or at least realistic) core of the self. He has a go at the existentialists, too, for their naive emphasis on a similarly autonomous conception of self. He puts forward an ego that is essentially other, developed through an act of 'misrecognition' where we come to identify with a particular set of images and symbols, arranged to give a false sense of unitary selfhood. In the mirror stage, we only identify with images of the body. When the mirror stage ends, we start to identify with language and other symbolic structures. This 'link[s] the I to socially elaborated situations':
'It is this moment that decisively tips the whole of human knowledge into being mediated by the other's desire, constitutes its objects in an abstract equivalence due to competition from other people, and turns the I into an apparatus to which every instinctual pressure constitutes a danger . . .'
In other words, the process of misrecognition becomes socially mediated - other people act as 'mirrors' in the sense that we see ourselves as we suppose they see us, and we get the images and symbols we come to identify with from them (i.e. from particular social contexts). This kind of self-alienation has to occur for us to function in society, but it causes neuroses. Specifically, Lacan implicates the narcissistic misrecognition of the mirror stage in the development of aggressive impulses and the repetition compulsion that Freud associates with the death drive. It feels like some sort of psychoanalytic take on the biblical fall from an innocent, pre-linguistic state of nature into the vicissitudes of the social and the ethical.
It seems like there might be some influence of Hegel via Kojève here. Lacan's notion of the formation of the ego through (mis)recognition resembles the shift from consciousness to self-consciousness through the struggle for recognition in The Phenomenology of Spirit. Lacan's ideas are also similar to Fichte's, although much more social - for Fichte, it's the gap between self as subject and self as object that constitutes the 'I'. Given this definition, you can't just crane your neck around and see yourself seeing. To do so would be both epistemologically and ontologically impossible - because this gap constitutes the subject, overcoming it would be synonymous with the dissolution of whatever it is that's trying to look in the first place.
One more thing that comes to mind is Vipassana meditation, which is aimed at revealing the truth of anatta (the Buddhist notion of 'non-self'); it teaches practitioners to decouple their identification with the ego and personal experience, and to recognise that whatever it is that is experiencing seems to lack substantive content apart from its form.
15/01/21:
My perspective on this text has changed since writing the above review, but I've decided to keep it and build on it like a true Hegelian.
Read the right translation!
The Fink translation is much, much clearer. Do not start with the Sheridan translation, like I did. Even with the Fink translation, though, you can tell it must have been a real challenge wrangling Lacan's disordered syntax into something clear and comprehensible. I kept forgetting the subject of the sentence as I read... or maybe Lacan did. It's often unclear what the subject was in the first place, but it feels like some supreme abstraction has been carried over from the previous sentence - or was it the one before that? The previous paragraph, maybe?
A Hegelian 'real'
When I first read this essay, I interpreted Lacan's notion of the 'I' in relation to what I knew about his notion of the real, which - at the time - I thought of as roughly analogous to Kant's thing-in-itself - some transcendental x that escapes representation by definition, about which we can say nothing but that it is logically implied by the phenomenal world insofar as we feel we need to ground that world in something external in order to avoid tautology. Since learning more about Lacan and what it means for him to be Hegelian rather than Kantian, I've realised he means something quite different by the 'real'. For Hegel, each term in the dialectic that characterises subjectivity (i.e. the world as it unfolds, including the self that unfolds within it – note that this is a broader idea than the individual psychological subject) is interdependent, capable of being thought of only insofar as it is contradicted by the other terms in reference to which it is defined. A Hegelian understanding of Lacan's notion of the real is therefore not outside or beyond language. Rather, it is a function of language (or a function of representation more generally); like each term in Hegel's dialectic, it only is insofar as it isn't what it's defined negatively with reference to. That is to say, the real isn't outside of language by the very fact that it's only defined in relation to language. To quote Jacques-Alain Miller, cited in an essay by Adrian Johnston:
'. . . nothingness enters the world through language. You can say that in another way: reference is the void. But this void is created by language . . . A void would be unthinkable in the real if not for signifiers.'
Informed by this understanding of the real, the split that constitutes the Lacanian subject is not at the transcendental intersection between ontology and epistemology highlighted by Kant and Fichte, but it is entirely within representation. Like the apparent contradiction that constitutes the Hegelian subject, it is immanent rather than transcendental. Like Hegel, Lacan transposes the Kantian / Fichtean split down one level of abstraction, into the realm of phenomena; in doing so, he resists the temptation to posit some self-sufficient externality that could ground experience. As in Hegel's system, we only get the appearance or implication of a beyond, as a function of subjectivity. This beyond isn't substantive in-itself because it can only be thought of as part of a greater whole that includes its opposite.
For Kant and Fichte, the split that constitutes the subject is between phenomena and the unknowable 'beyond' of the thing-in-itself that conditions them and makes them possible. For Hegel and Lacan, it is entirely within experience - for Hegel, it is between consciousness and self-consciousness, and for Lacan, it is between self as speaking subject and self as object of speech. Speech always posits a subject and an object in this way; like geist, it cuts the world up into particulars by positing abstractions that define one another by contrast. Both thinkers seem to resemble Whitehead here, who argued that conceptual thought works by cutting things off from the rest of the universe. That is to say, it identifies and represents particulars by falsifying them - by abstracting them from the (spatial and temporal) context that defines them.
Lacan finds a home for something like Hegel's dialectic in structural linguistics, but it's still basically a panlogism of phenomena (without meaning to imply some self-sufficient 'real') as they unfold for the human subject. It's not psychology in the usual sense of the term - like Hegel, Lacan is concerned with structures that extend beyond the typical psychological subject, although he does concern himself with the effect of these structures on that subject and their role in constituting him / her.
The mirror stage as an empirical claim
Lacan actually rebuffs my transcendental misunderstanding of his subject right here, in the essay:
'. . . were I to build on these subjective data alone . . . my theoretical efforts would remain exposed to the charge of lapsing into the unthinkable, that of an absolute subject' (79).
To avoid this charge, Lacan repeatedly cites 'objective data' about how people and animals behave at specific points in the development of the individual. He stresses his empirical intent by describing the mirror stage as a 'temporal dialectic' (78) (not an ontological one, as in Fichte) that proposes a 'genetic order' for the development of ego defenses (79). Over half a century later, the mirror stage has well and truly been falsified as an empirical claim. So far as I know, we have no real reason to believe that infants are born without a sense of themselves as one object among others in an autonomous and independently-existing external world. Research revealed decades ago that the famous 'A-not-B error' taken by Piaget as a failure of object permanence is most likely just a failure of memory and motor coordination. Also, it's odd that Lacan's notion of self as object should depend on language as such - other species show complex social behaviour without anything near the level of symbolic abstraction humans are capable of. A more charitable interpretation of Lacan's theory would, I think, take the notion of speech in the broadest sense, as conceptual thought. In any case, the mirror stage only retains value as a metaphor for philosophical ideas about the self.
Review continued here.
January 4, 2019
An elusive and esoteric elucidation of the mirror stage, where one metamorphoses, like the imago into the human who can separate their conscious mind from their earthly body...
March 12, 2017
Once again I am reminded of the fact that I simply do not fit well with the psychoanalysts, despite finding the premise of their theories interesting. Dry writing and too complicated structure for no reason at all really.
July 10, 2025
I've grown into liking him. I believe it is a form of masochism.
November 25, 2022
no aspoň to bylo krátký
Read
February 26, 2021This is part 2 of 2. You can find part 1 here.
The mirror stage
Lacan pits his notion of the divided subject against 'any philosophy directly stemming from the [Cartesian] cogito' (75), including existentialists and psychologists who treat the ego as some self-sufficient, autonomous, realistic and 'utilitarian' (80) core of the self. For Lacan, the subject is incomplete and subject to the externalities that constitute it, and the ego is a necessary illusion at the root of all neuroses.
The mirror stage is the first in a series of 'constitutive misrecognitions' (80) that develop the ego and therefore the subject. As discussed above, there are clear problems with taking it literally - the specific empirical claims Lacan makes about the age at which it occurs are largely unsubstantiated, and - as famous critic of Lacan Raymond Tallis points out - blind people experience subjectivity just like the rest of us! Lacan seems to anticipate these criticisms when he describes the mirror stage as an 'exemplary situation' (76) - that is, an exemplar of the identificatory processes that define the human subject. Anyway, this is the thrust of it:
Through identification with his / her image, the child develops a conception of himself / herself as an object in relation to other objects in the world - this is the 'specular I' (79), which is the 'I' 'in a primordial form' (76), 'prior to its social identification' (76). When the mirror stage ends, 'secondary identifications' (76) are made in language that give rise to a 'social I' (79) that links the ego to 'socially elaborated situations' (79). Like the 'migratory locust' or the 'female pigeon' (77), one develops socially only through an image of oneself, whether one finds it in a literal mirror, in the 'intra-organic mirror' of the cerebral cortex (78), or in other people. As in Hegel's master-slave dialectic, the subject achieves self-consciousness through its awareness of itself as an object for others, as one social unit among many. This kind of self-objectivisation or self-alienation is necessary to establish a functional relationship between the inner world and the outer world (78). Lacan therefore describes the I as a kind of 'armor' (78) or 'fortified camp' (78) used to interact with the world. It is similar to Jung's concept of the persona, which is a sort of mask used to navigate social situations. Lacan's I also enables us to control the libidinal impulses of the id - in this respect, it is 'an apparatus to which every instinctual pressure constitutes a danger' (79).
The mirror stage points the ego 'in a fictional direction' (76), making it the 'lure' of an 'alienating identity' (78) that we can only approach 'asymptotically' (76). Like the Hegelian subject, the Lacanian subject is always approaching but never finally reaching some more complete, less-contradictory thing outside itself. For Hegel, the subject repeatedly alienates itself by positing something apart from itself with reference to which it defines itself. It suffers and moves to overcome the apparent contradiction, but it always undercuts itself (think of the Freudian death drive) by positing a new term outside itself in order to continue constituting itself as this movement. Lacan's I is roughly analogous to the second term in Hegel's dialectic. For both thinkers, there is a split or contradiction at the heart of the subject that constitutes it and sets it in motion. It determines our experience whether we realise it or not, making it the 'cipher of [our] mortal destiny' (81).
Lacan speculates that we have an unconscious, emotionally ambiguous relationship with the I - we love and desire it because it represents everything we think we are and want to become, but we also feel aggression toward it as an externally-imposed source of alienation and libidinal prohibition. This is his rather far-fetched theory for why we tend to have ambiguous relationships with other people, characterised by a wide range of seemingly-contradictory feelings and impulses - love, aggression, desire, identification and so on. He never really explains the leap from our relationship with the I to our relationships with other people though, only citing (in a later essay) some weak anecdotal data about kids hitting other kids and complaining that they themselves were hit.
The mirror stage
Lacan pits his notion of the divided subject against 'any philosophy directly stemming from the [Cartesian] cogito' (75), including existentialists and psychologists who treat the ego as some self-sufficient, autonomous, realistic and 'utilitarian' (80) core of the self. For Lacan, the subject is incomplete and subject to the externalities that constitute it, and the ego is a necessary illusion at the root of all neuroses.
The mirror stage is the first in a series of 'constitutive misrecognitions' (80) that develop the ego and therefore the subject. As discussed above, there are clear problems with taking it literally - the specific empirical claims Lacan makes about the age at which it occurs are largely unsubstantiated, and - as famous critic of Lacan Raymond Tallis points out - blind people experience subjectivity just like the rest of us! Lacan seems to anticipate these criticisms when he describes the mirror stage as an 'exemplary situation' (76) - that is, an exemplar of the identificatory processes that define the human subject. Anyway, this is the thrust of it:
Looking in the mirror 'immediately gives rise in a child to a series of gestures in which he playfully experiences the relationship between the movements made in the image and the reflected environment, and between this virtual complex and the reality it duplicates - namely, the child's own body, and the persons and even things around him' (75).
Through identification with his / her image, the child develops a conception of himself / herself as an object in relation to other objects in the world - this is the 'specular I' (79), which is the 'I' 'in a primordial form' (76), 'prior to its social identification' (76). When the mirror stage ends, 'secondary identifications' (76) are made in language that give rise to a 'social I' (79) that links the ego to 'socially elaborated situations' (79). Like the 'migratory locust' or the 'female pigeon' (77), one develops socially only through an image of oneself, whether one finds it in a literal mirror, in the 'intra-organic mirror' of the cerebral cortex (78), or in other people. As in Hegel's master-slave dialectic, the subject achieves self-consciousness through its awareness of itself as an object for others, as one social unit among many. This kind of self-objectivisation or self-alienation is necessary to establish a functional relationship between the inner world and the outer world (78). Lacan therefore describes the I as a kind of 'armor' (78) or 'fortified camp' (78) used to interact with the world. It is similar to Jung's concept of the persona, which is a sort of mask used to navigate social situations. Lacan's I also enables us to control the libidinal impulses of the id - in this respect, it is 'an apparatus to which every instinctual pressure constitutes a danger' (79).
The mirror stage points the ego 'in a fictional direction' (76), making it the 'lure' of an 'alienating identity' (78) that we can only approach 'asymptotically' (76). Like the Hegelian subject, the Lacanian subject is always approaching but never finally reaching some more complete, less-contradictory thing outside itself. For Hegel, the subject repeatedly alienates itself by positing something apart from itself with reference to which it defines itself. It suffers and moves to overcome the apparent contradiction, but it always undercuts itself (think of the Freudian death drive) by positing a new term outside itself in order to continue constituting itself as this movement. Lacan's I is roughly analogous to the second term in Hegel's dialectic. For both thinkers, there is a split or contradiction at the heart of the subject that constitutes it and sets it in motion. It determines our experience whether we realise it or not, making it the 'cipher of [our] mortal destiny' (81).
Lacan speculates that we have an unconscious, emotionally ambiguous relationship with the I - we love and desire it because it represents everything we think we are and want to become, but we also feel aggression toward it as an externally-imposed source of alienation and libidinal prohibition. This is his rather far-fetched theory for why we tend to have ambiguous relationships with other people, characterised by a wide range of seemingly-contradictory feelings and impulses - love, aggression, desire, identification and so on. He never really explains the leap from our relationship with the I to our relationships with other people though, only citing (in a later essay) some weak anecdotal data about kids hitting other kids and complaining that they themselves were hit.
September 24, 2021
No because what tf did I just read
October 21, 2024
Lacan intends The Mirror Stage to shed light on the "I Function," which we can understand as an interpolation of the Freudian ego. In short, Lacan is concerned with the structure and operation of self. He opens the piece with an avowal that the experience of psychoanalysis is "at odds with any philosophy directly stemming form the cogito." (75) As we recall from Descartes, a 'cogito' philosophy is one in which all being is established based on the fact of thinking or awareness. Instead, Lacan will illustrate a process of identification, transformation and subjectivity. Far from an existence independent of the senses, Lacan's picture of an infant in front of a mirror necessarily involves movement and sight, whereby an infant recognizes, or misrecognizes, himself in his own reflection.
This is the process by which the "I Function" or ego, or self, is formed. The baby seen bouncing in the mirror is the same as the one looking, and yet it is not him. A discrepancy between body, consciousness, image, and environment provides the introduction of boundaries to the baby's experience of the world. One who had heretofore no sense of where he began and ended is given a display of his own form, his shape, his outline. Such a transformative confrontation takes place prior to the introduction of language, and is therefore a primary, necessary, developmental phase, a precondition for any social interrelation with others. It gives the conditions for the being, that is the baby, to have any beginnings of a relationship with a reality outside of his own existence.
Lacan describes this form as situated "In a fictional direction." (76) In other words, the one looking in the mirror establishes his sense of self pointing towards an image that is at once him and not him; it is an unattainable ideal. Identification with the image transforms the child to a striver, an approacher who will seek but never reach a resolution between his body and it's reflection, between his inner world and outer world. This is how the self is formed and functions: A "Dialectical synthesis by which he must resolve, as I, his discordance with his own reality." (76)
This is the process by which the "I Function" or ego, or self, is formed. The baby seen bouncing in the mirror is the same as the one looking, and yet it is not him. A discrepancy between body, consciousness, image, and environment provides the introduction of boundaries to the baby's experience of the world. One who had heretofore no sense of where he began and ended is given a display of his own form, his shape, his outline. Such a transformative confrontation takes place prior to the introduction of language, and is therefore a primary, necessary, developmental phase, a precondition for any social interrelation with others. It gives the conditions for the being, that is the baby, to have any beginnings of a relationship with a reality outside of his own existence.
Lacan describes this form as situated "In a fictional direction." (76) In other words, the one looking in the mirror establishes his sense of self pointing towards an image that is at once him and not him; it is an unattainable ideal. Identification with the image transforms the child to a striver, an approacher who will seek but never reach a resolution between his body and it's reflection, between his inner world and outer world. This is how the self is formed and functions: A "Dialectical synthesis by which he must resolve, as I, his discordance with his own reality." (76)
November 10, 2021
Povești cu pești.
December 22, 2021
normally i wouldn't mark a work this short a read, but the amount of hours i have poured into trying to understand this entirely allows for it to be one
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September 26, 2022I typically wouldn’t log something this short into my goodreads but I have spent an excruciating amount of time trying to understand lacan that I think it counts
November 14, 2023
what is bro yapping about❓❓
April 3, 2024
I'm so happy that I'm discovering that so many of the psychoanalysis papers I've read this year are on Goodreads. I'm inflating my Goodreads numbers SO HARD right now you guys... so fucking hard.
April 19, 2024
Vanskeligste 5 sidene jeg har lest på lenge! :-) Men konseptet om mirror stage er spennende når man får litt veiledning (its not you, its lacan😔🤝)
June 21, 2024
It's okay. Hard to read. What the fart.
May 26, 2025
this is one of those ones im gonna have to read many many times over before it actually makes sense... but i am very much enjoying reading lacan
Read
August 24, 2025niche brainrot
November 4, 2025
treacherous read, but interesting.
Read
November 21, 2025Lacon: the “Phallusy,” of the Mirror Stage
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 10, 2025
i collapsed over my trotte-bébé reading this - in jubilation!!!!!!
April 26, 2022
haters and losers will give this 1 star
April 21, 2023
Despite having only seven pages, this piece of literature felt a lot more exhausting to read than a lot of the books I've read previously. Books that were a lot longer than this.
Reading this, to me, felt like cramming my brain with more information than it could possibly hold, which on top of that is mostly unintelligible, due to the complicated nature of Lacan's writing.
'The Mirror Stage' was just excrutiatingly difficult to read, and reading it ultimately felt more like a chore than anything to me.
Reading this, to me, felt like cramming my brain with more information than it could possibly hold, which on top of that is mostly unintelligible, due to the complicated nature of Lacan's writing.
'The Mirror Stage' was just excrutiatingly difficult to read, and reading it ultimately felt more like a chore than anything to me.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews